Banjos, Motorcycles, Cash

I find I have neglected to mention he most memorable thing that ever happened with the old Neufeld banjo.

If you thought it was the chance to go up against the devil in an Okanagan banjo shootout that ended in a draw, you would be almost right. If you thought it was the opportunity to play the old standard 'Peg of My Heart' in a show, with six weeks in advance to learn it, you'd be nearly right about that too, though I don't know how you'd have learned that story since I haven't told it. This was memorable too, but not the tops.

I played my banjo once at a funeral for a fallen biker in Armstrong, BC, on demand. I was commanded to play by the daughter of a old friend of the deceased, since she knew I sang a song about a red haired biker woman, on my banjo - Richard Thompson's 52 Vincent Black Lightning - and the deceased had herself been a red-haired biker woman. She had died in a terrible accident, coming home from a party with her husband. He was ahead of her on his bike and had just come round the bend of a country road when he was passed by a bunch of drunken teenagers in a pick-up. The pick-up swerved as it continued around and slammed into the second bike.

I play the Richard Thompson song in a special B-flat Tuning invented (I believe) by Bob Carlin. It's my favourite tuning for the banjo - very rich. It goes like this: fBflatFCD.

And the song, in case you don't know it, goes like this:

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike
A girl could feel special on any such like
Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952
And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme
And he pulled her on behind
And down to Boxhill they did ride

Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand
But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man
I've fought with the law since I was seventeen
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine
Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22
And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you
But if fate should break my stride
Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae
For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery
Shotgun blast in his chest, left nothing inside
Come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside
When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
Said I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeves won't do
They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52
And he reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
He said I've got no further use for these
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home

And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride

This performance was not something I felt right about doing. I was a stranger to the community and deeply embarrassed by the size of the gesture I was being asked to make for a person I had not known – to stand on the alter of a chapel with a banjo and perform a virtuosic anthem to the biker ethos, (which some of my Toronto friends might have been forgiven, at least when I performed it, for confusing with an anthem to the bicycle ethos.) Still, the thought of saying no to my friend was equally dubious.

The chapel was full of well-dressed, Sunday-best family members. I felt they were all regarding me with much suspicion, even contempt, as if I myself were that teenage pick-up truck. The bikers stayed at the back. I would have worn a suit but was far from home with only a few articles of clothing that would suit a summer of farm life. So I wore black jeans and T-shirt and hoped desperately that I might project the gravitas of Johnny Cash. I did not feel such gravitas though. Only fear. (It did not help to contemplate that, by all reports, Johnny Cash didn't even like the banjo. I believe the quote went something like this: "I can't tell you much about heaven, but I say one thing for sure: There won't be no banjos there." Perhaps the double negative was meant to project the notion that in fact there *were* banjos in heaven. Perhaps he was subtly rejecting the notion of heaven altogether, preferring to go instead where the banjos roamed. I don't think so though, and certainly didn't at the time.)

After that afternoon of playing to a small town chapel packed through to the parking lot with members of an Okanagan biker outfit called the Anus Eaters, and some of their daughters who showed up on horseback, I was told I had become a full member of the community. "Since you met our dead," they said.

There was a big handle-bar mustached feller named Fergie who came up to me after and said, ‘When I heard you were gonna play banjo at the funeral of my friend, I thought to myself ‘is this gonna bug me, or what?’ He had pulled himself up to his full height and was glaring down on me. I thought, here it comes. But, he added, it did not bug him at all. He stuck his hand out and told me he had been moved by it. I was told the ancient and very proper-looking mother of the deceased had liked it too.

I've played at memorial services since then, in small theatres and big theatres, always for someone I barely knew (doubt I could do it for someone I love). Such places have always been packed to the rafters with people who loved the one being remembered and did not care one bit whether I succeeded or failed, and that is the way it should be.

But nothing but nothing was more rewarding than that dusty afternoon in the Okanagan Valley in 1998. I believe I grew an eight of an inch that day and could finally say I was taller than 5'7".

And then I was grabbed by a local farming family with a field as wide as the town to spend the rest of the afternoon bailing hay. The black jeans got torn to ribbons and I never wore them again, and have never acquired another pair. It was my singular Cash moment. Cash with a banjo. And Richard Thompson to boot. With Bob Carlin's tuning. That's a lot of support.

The fact is though, where Johnny Cash and heaven and banjos are concerned, I believe the Man in Black has gone wherever June Carter went, whether there are banjos there or no.

Banjos and Clocks

The subject of Patek Style Banjo (whereby the player frails or picks his open-tuning tenor banjo in the manner of a 5-string) has already been discussed by my esteemed Plunkthumping colleague, but since I am a lover of all things Czech (esp my wife) I feel compelled to bring it up again, with specific reference to Miroslav Patek's musical clock.

I don't pretend to entirely understand music theory, (though I believe I would if only I'd been handed a banjo at age ten instead of a trumpet) but I do find it aesthetically very satisfying that the city of clocks has bred a banjo-playing musical clockmaker, or rather a maker of musical clocks.

Above is the famous old Astrological clock in Old Town Square. Below are before-and-after pics of the site of the giant metronome, constructed to replace a truly appalling monument to Stalin, the biggest in the world, in which Josef was depicted leading a throng of workers.


(And why is Stalin smiling? Because he's at the front of the bread-line!)

It was situated at the highest point of the city - Letna - where everyone would see it, where ancient armies traditionally camped the night before they stormed. The sculptor's wife committed suicide while he was building it. The sculptor himself committed suicide when he'd finished, reportedly leaving his entire estate to a school for the blind because he knew they would never have to look upon his work. As it happened, no one had to look at it for very long.



Stalin died and Kruschev pulled it down, leaving intact the bunker underneath. Decades later, Havel commissioned the Metronome. The city-dwellers don't love it, no more than they love the alien babies crawling up and down the TV tower, no more than they love the dancing Fred & Ginger building. But I always liked it. A metronome is a clock that doesn't tell time. Only keeps it. And there's much to be kept and contemplated where the passage of time in Prague is concerned.

But what does all this have to do with the banjo? Miroslav Patek and his four-stringed five-string, that what. And his musical clock. A clock that won't tell time and a banjo that can't count but doesn't have to. These are mysteries fit for the mystical city of Prague.

(It would of course be fitting to classify this post under the Banjo Banjart files, if only they actually existed.)

One more thing. This man



is Rudolph II, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor (reign: 1576 to 1611), largely responsible for the city's mystical reputation. He had a weakness for the company of alchemists. Below is a portrait of him by his court painter, Arcimboldo. See what I mean?




And finally, a third clock, in the Moravian town Olomouc, courtesy of Pane Patek in the Comments section. And a clockman to play us out.

Gone Fishing

Let's try that hiatus again, shall we?

Orchestral Whistling Rufus

If the above awesome image makes your thighs quiver (as it do mine), then you must run don't walk to this site, home of the Heftone Orchestra. Don't let the group portrait fool you though. Look closer and you'll find it's just two very enthusiastic banjo players. But such a collection of banjos they play! Such much! Scroll down and you'll find a glorious, generous mp3 collection of the music they make - 25 tracks! Glory, I say, and Glory Again.
The above incidentally, is an example of a Heftone Lojo bass banjo, and is the invention of one Lawrence A. Hefferan, father of Brian.

The Orchestra's album-cover imagery brings up once again the mysterious connection in American culture between frogs and banjos, going back more than a century (subject of a Trampoline Hall lecture I never gave, having spoke instead on the Malleable Personality.)

Perhaps if we get to the bottom of the synchronistic incidence of Rana Banjosis (Rana Clamitans?), we may yet be able to use what we find to save the global frog population's catastrophic slide to extinction. If we don't, perhaps the Banjo Banjosis itself will be next.

Sampled Banjo

Not breaking the haitus rule since this is not my text but rather excerpts from a description of World Standard's sampled and retooled acoustic folk, aka Japanese Banjo, from an FOA web page, translated by Google. I would use italics but they don't come up as an option in my Safari Browser, so quotation marks will have to do. NB my favourite part is right at the end:

"Listening it harkens in the music which it does not exceed...
For example, as for mood music
and アンビエント music
before the half a century...
However, little opportunity,
invited me to the sea of the world.
As for there,
you think as the land of the remote region
and start and,
being very free,
the unbend world...

Then, the technique which enjoys all music equally
was learned,
listening the sound which it does not exceed ...

" All music exists because of me and your "
You inquire about that you do not hear
each one it is selfish...

One loads of the shoulder are lowered.
And two loads of my and your shoulder

furthermore you lower World Standard.
Listening the sound -
World Standard which it does not exceed.
Listening it probably will exceed in you?
Well, listening
we want exceeding.
Listening
it should have exceeded..."

Hiatus

It's Friday. The computer came back. And so, to quote the Baghdad Blogger, Salam Pax, "I think Haitus is the word. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen."

I'll return to the 'jar as soon as I'm back at my research on early 19th Century BANJO. Oh, and I still want an answer to this.

More Than Just A Theory

Emmett's cemetery stone reads, "Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904), whose song 'Dixie Land' inspired the courage and devotion of the Southern people and now thrills the hearts of a united nation."

A morning's walk north from there, the shared cemetery stone of Ben and Lew Snowden (fiddler and banjo player, respectively) reads, "They taught 'Dixie' to Dan Emmett."

Funny. Dan Emmett is credited not just for writing Dixie but also for having invented the whole Minstrel phenomenon. Hmm. Before he came along, Minstrel players were known as 'Ethiopians'. Hmm. Sounds like a real self-made man.

In the above pic, btw, Ben and Lew are shown performing on a second-storey stage platform, converted from the gable of their house (!) in Clinton, Ohio.

Sounds like a good story, n'est pas? Even if you don't care about Shakespeare.

Way Up North in Dixie

Finally received this morning a copy of the book I've been looking for for ten years or so, ever since I saw an ad for it in an issue of Harper's Magazine. I was told back then that the publisher was too obscure to order from. I used to actually dream about it, the cover art was so evocative, but eventually I had to let it drop. All that was before the days of all the Internets, or at least my very own personal sit-at-home Internet. I thought of it again a couple of weeks ago in the course of doing research to write a play about Austin Steward, one of the founders of the Wilberforce settlement in Ontario, better known these days as Lucan, home of the infamous (or saintly) Donnelly clan.

This book, by Howard L. Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks, tells the story of the origin of Dixie's Land, the National Anthem of the Confederate States of America and, ironically, a favourite song of America's (unofficially) gay President, Abraham Lincoln.

Apparently, "Dixie" became ubiquitous again last year, at least in the big country to the south of here, when it got rewritten and thrown onto the net as part of an animated political satire of the Bush/Kerry election campaign. But that, it seems, was not the first time it had been retooled for political purposes.

The song is generally considered to have been composed by Dan Emmett in 1859, as a celebration of "de Land ob Cotton" in the Confederate South. The Sackses, however, contend that Dixie was actually *stolen* by Emmett from a neighbouring Ohio family of Black musicians, the Snowdens, who actually wrote the song to make a celebration of the *North* and tell of the experience of breaking away from ye olde Cotton Land. Apparently this is the subject of much debate down in Mount Vernon, Ohio, in contrast to the rest of the country who generally believe, I would imagine, that a song that old couldn't have been written by anyone at all.

Sounds like a good book, n'est pas? At least to me. Of course I would be interested even if it didn't present a powerful example of approbation and stereotyping. I'm the sort of guy who cares about whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. So...

(Image above by Lloyd Ostendorf)

2nd Plug

Got another plug the other day, from a fellow banjo blogger name a Plunkthumping.

Also, found the above pic on the website of Matthias Grob, musician and inventor from Brasil. It is, he says, "a banjo with interconnected strings," and was inspired by a dream.

Still, all of this is going to slow way down in a couple of days when I get my own computer back.

Tarbooosh

Take a look at artist Roberto Greene's Banjo Boy. Or don't. Wanted to get permission to use the image, but the "Contact the Artist" page of his site isn't up yet. When I try to post the pic, it gets replaced by an icon that says "Image Hosted by Tripod," which isn't pretty but can only be true.

Where images of banjos are concerned, Mr. Greene's got another and another and another and another and so he would get top billing in my Banjo Banjart book, but for the fact that I cannot display them. Ah well. His banjos are all tenors anyway. Not a single drone string among them.

A Friend to All: The Washtub Bass

In a funny bit of serendipidy, I ran into Colin Couch this morning, virtuoso of the lower registers, mere hours after posting about the Epiphone's Coming Out and subsequent demise.

Of course, the ideal banjo to play along with such an instrument would be fretless. There are some who feel that, when it comes to the banjo, frets just get in the way.

Banjo Story Part Two - How the Epiphone Was Lost

The truth about activity on this blog, btw, is that my computer crashed last weekend as I was closing in on the end of the first draft of a large prose project. Since I can't seem to conceive of working on said project with anything other than my own laptop, I find myself spinning my wheels. The blog is not serious. The blog is an effort to keep the muscle working until I get my beloved computer with its desktop of Prague Rooftops returned, apparently at the end of this week.

So. How I lost my Epiphone goes something like this: Having endured weeks of terrible regret, I began to discover that it was less painful not to play the banjo at all rather than play the Epiphone. There are some readers who might approve of this turn of events, but if that is the case then they must be here to look at the pictures.

The truth is I was judging my Epiphone too harshly in comparing it to another instrument. Everybody knows that is foolish behaviour. He who seeks one banjo within another is lost. The Epiphone had its own qualities and I felt that, given time and application, I would gradually come to forget my lost Neufeld with its curly maple neck (Daren down at the Company-Comments Kitchen-Party calls it a *tiger-maple* neck and that, I'm sure, is what mine was too), with its ebony fretboard and almost embarrassingly ornate inlay work. I would forget my Neufeld with its subtle small talk and come to embrace the deep-toned, sideshow barker that was my new friend: the Epiphone. I was a reasonable person. We've all had loud friends whose volume we come to stop noticing even as the heads turn in shock and scorn at strawberry socials ("Could you please *do* something about him?")

And so the weeks stretched out into months, the fall stretched out into winter, and I barely played the Epiphone but kept it always in its case. The time would come, I felt, when I would so desire the company of the banjo that, when I pulled it out of its case, it would invoke all the power of the wooden O even if its O was not made of wood at all but rather metal. January turned into February (imagine February without a banjo) and February into March, Still I did not play.

And then, on April the 1st 2000, two things happened: Carly, my girlfriend at the time, was set to appear in an Art Burlesque at Lee's Palace on Bloor Street, and I was invited to a birthday party just down the street from where I lived. The plan was to go the birthday party for 5 or so and then go to Lee's Palace to meet Carly for 8, well before she went on at 10:30 or eleven.

So. Hmm. But there was a guy showed up at the birthday party, who I had not seen in a couple of years, named Colin Couch. What's more, the last time I saw him was on the grounds of the Caravan Farm Theatre, same general location as the last time I had felt any joy playing the banjo. To make matters even more compelling, Colin thought I was *mad* at him for not being in touch. Well I wasn't. And to prove it, I ran home to get my Epiphone. This, I felt, was the sign for which I had been waiting all winter.

Colin is a musician of the lower registers, a man of great bass-line talent, a player of the *Tuba* (of a time with John Millard's Polka Dogs, where he often had to make his tuba fill in for an absent trombone, working his embouchure across that massive mouthpiece as swiftly as any slide, but more on that later) and the Washtub Bass. He had brought his washub bass along to Danielle's party, and after spending an hour or so catching up, we set up to play in a corner.

The Epiphone really seemed to love a party. It was the Epiphone's Coming Out party. Colin and I played all the songs we had tried and learned at the Caravan, plus more. People seemed to like them. It was a beautiful day so anyone who didn't could go outside. We played for hours. Danielle was mixing Mescal Margaritas and I had a few - one or two - and they were good, and I allowed 8 p.m. to slide by. And then 9. I couldn't tear myself away. The moment I had been waiting for all fall and winter had finally come.

Still, ten o'clock rolled around and I realized Carly would be performing soon. I zipped my Epiphone up into its softshell case (designed for a long-neck electric bass, but the banjo fit nicely) and my friend Michael kindly offered to drive me up to Lee's Palace and drop me off, whereby I'd have a half an hour or so to spare before Carly's act.

Still, as we approached the nightclub, the thought began to occur that I was in fact arriving more than two hours later than I said I would. And that I was not absolutely certain what time Carly was actually supposed to perform. Not actually. Not really. And I began to get anxious. I knew too that it was going to be a popular event and started to wonder whether I would even get in.

So it was with great relief (though no small anxiety) that I arrived at the doors and found the front entrance area abandoned by all except those who were taking the tickets and a couple of bouncers, one of whom it turned out was actually an off-duty police officer. One of the bouncers looked like a bench-pressing Nerd, like the guy in the bathing suit from the ad in the back of the 60's comic book. He kept his hand resting on the inside handle of the door. I could see through the glass that he was telling a story to the ticket-takers and the other bouncer (i.e. the cop), and he must have loved that story, because as I grabbed the outside handle to pull it open, he yanked it shut and continued to talk.

Surprised, reminded of my hurry, I tried to pull the door open again. Again he pulled it shut. He was stonger than me, of course. I'm a fairly small man. I waited. Bugged. Feeling somewhat *communicative*. A small line formed behind me. The bouncer finished his story and pushed open the door. I was behind the glass instead of the opening, so I was not the first to enter. I filed past him with the others and remarked, breezily, "Hey, you're a real power-tripper, aren't you."

Both hands came down on my shoulders and he said, "That's it, you're outta here," and I realized what I had done. Talking fast, I apologized and attempted to explain my situation, I was late, I was worried, my girlfriend was performing, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He said "You're a trouble maker" and I said, "Come on: You *know* I'm not a troublemaker. You *know* I'm not a troublemaker." We were pressed against each other like lovers, pushing in opposite directions. He pushed me right out the door and closed it. I pulled it open and tried to plead with him. And then he fixed his hand in the centre of my chest and gave me a push.

I flew. Out into the wide sidewalk of Bloor Street. My feet were in the air. I landed on my back on the sidewalk and rolled, using long-dormant acrobat instincts. before I had even become aware of what had happened, I was sitting in the middle of the dark, bustling sidewalk of a Saturday night.

And then I turned and saw the softshell case lying there beside me. I reached over, unzipped the top of the bag and pulled out the headstock and the top part of the neck, broken off to a jagged edge. Then, still in shock, I looked through the glass door at the bouncer and held it up to show him. He shrugged. I would like to say he gave me the thumbs up, but I think it was just a very showy shrug. And then I looked to my left and saw Carly, standing on the sidewalk in full make-up and heels, covering her costume with a long coat, trying to get ahold of me on her cell phone. Trying to find out where the heck I was.

I said, "Hey, Carly," and she looked down and saw me. She was really mad. She hadn't gone on yet, but she was about to.Her anger didn't quite evaporate when she saw the headstock, since I had clearly not been sitting on that sidewalk for two hours. But she did still try to get me in. Truth was, I wasn't really up to it, but I wasn't about to say no. The bouncer wouldn't let me though. Like an immigration official, he does not change his mind once it's made. When she let him have it with a long stream of invective, he just laughed. She wasn't a troublemaker, as far as he was concerned. She was just a woman who had a boyfriend with a broken banjo.

And her mascara was beginning to smear, and it was my fault.

Stay tuned for Part Three of the Banjo Story. Hopefully Part Three won't have to be written on a borrowed computer.

Beckett's Banjo

I had a dream the other night
when everything was still
I dreamt I saw Sam Beckett,
a comin down the hill

I asked him where he headed for
He pointed with his pen
The ground ope'd up and he stepped down
It closed and shut him in

Oh Sam Beckett
I will not cry for thee
I know you're goin away from life
At last alone to be

I stood another moment
Though the eve was drawing nigh
And then I saw another one
Approachin by and by

A porkpie hat was in her hand
a tear was in her eye
Her name she said was Buster
Suzanne oh don't you cry

Oh Buster Keaton
(she said) Don't you cry for me
I'm takin you to Buckett Land
My true love for to see

I asked her why she came disguised
She fixed a jaundiced eye
T'was hard she said to love a one
Who longed so for to die

Buster Keaton runs upon the plain
And leaps around the sky
Buster Keaton's stuck with so much life
Enough for Sam and I

Oh Suzanna
I will not cry for thee
I know you've got your Buster-side
Your true love for to see

Oh Suzanna
I will not cry for thee
I know you've got your Buster-side
Your true love for to see

(with apologies to Stephen Foster)

Still

Looking for answers to these questions.

A Key

As to what might fascinate the local banjo enthusiasts:

Viennese Waltz for Banjo

We filmed some student waltzers waltzing at Toronto Dance this evening, under the fine tutelage of Chuan Chee. Or rather, Kat filmed, I watched. Chuan graciously permitted the shoot, having cleared it with his students, in exchange for the promise of a link on my (!) website. So here it is: 3 years old and it took just one for them to become the biggest school in Toronto, with over 500 students and lessons in Latin, Ballroom, Salsa, Bachata, Merengue, Swing, West Coast Swing, Lindy Hop, Tap, and *Wedding*.
And what does this have to do with the banjo? Kat's doing research towards making a short film version of a song of mine called "We're in the Movies," of which the less said (for now) the better, except that Chuan tells us it is a somewhat sluggish version of a Viennese Waltz (58 to 60 measures per minute, as compared to a slow waltz, which features 29-30. My song runs at about 54. The slow waltz was what they were learning tonight.)
We recorded the song today too, in an elementary school gym, with tremendous help from James Thomson on double bass. I play the song very plainly, it being a difficult thing to ornament 3/4 time while frailing. If anyone has any tips to mastering the clawhammer waltz, I would appreciate them. Perhaps when the time comes to do some real solid recording, I'll ask my new neighbour Chris Coole to come in and frail some of his delicate chiaroscuros around my rusty-squeezebox sound.

Banjo Story Part One - How the Neufeld Was Lost

The kitchen party of this blog, for the moment anyway, is down in the comments section of the 3rd post. "Company" has company. I'm even down there, posting anonymously. Didn't mean to do that. Thought I couldn't get on my own site. False alarm.

The rest of the story of my old Neufeld went something like this: I played with my banjo all summer in an outdoor show at the Caravan Farm Theatre called 'The Ballad of Weedy Peetstraw' opposite the great bluegrass virtuoso and banjo-maker (and banjo-pick maker) of the Okanagan Valley, Gord Acri. He played the bluegrass-pickin devil and I the yound naive clawhammering country-boy who sells his soul to become a city-slickin' banjo-pickin' country star. (The city set was made out of walls of empty liquor bottles, which is funny when you contemplate how and where those bottles got drained.) The play was by Vanouver's Peter Anderson and Toronto's true contemporary heir to Uncle Dave Macon, John Millard (of which and whom, more later.)

The musical trick went like this: When Weedy played with his pure country heart, he frailed, and all the playing was my own. However, once Weedy's soul was in the possession of said dapper devil, my banjo was replaced with a fire-painted stringless wonder, and Gord did all my playing for me, standing above me on the stage in a white suit and a very subtle pair of horns in his bald head. For my part, I concentrated on dressing well and pretending.

(Gord Acri)

The climax of the play came when I had to battled with Mister Acri for my soul - his flaming bluegrass against my simple clawhammer. Now, the fact of the matter is, this was a battle I could not win, no matter how hard I tried, (no matter how nice a guy Gord Acri was in real life.) I could be pretty and heartfelt on my banjar, but the fact is, so could Gord. I dragged around the moral authority of a broken heart that summer, but he wore his life-creating love for the banjo on his sleeve, and I could never beat him. I could play with him, which is all he ever wanted to do, but in a scenario in which he was the devil and I the grass-chewing hick, I coud never win.

Also, I played everything below the 5th fret (which, btw, as Daniel Koulack once told me, is perfectly respectable) whereas Gord flashed up the neck and made liberal use of a bender, that allowed him to laugh with his banjo even as he was relishing his victory.

What saved me and the production (since the script demanded that I win on my own and I could not - not in a way that the audience could really believe) was the band, the other singers and the small town sweetheart played by Jennifer Lines, who had a far better set of pipes than I. In the climax of the final number, they all came over to my side of the battle and (with the help of a great Millardian arrangement incorporating the Clinch Mountain Backstep into the climax of the song), matched the Acri magic with pure energy, choral variety and gumption. The battle for Weedy's soul came out in a draw and the devil proved a gentleman by tipping his hat and walking away.

So... that was the summer of 1999. Outdoor theatre in Armstrong BC. In that environment of challenge and excitement, my beautiful Neufeld banjo, with its most basic brass tone ring and an open back, began to sound too quiet to my ear. Gord took it apart one day and discovered that my tone ring was in fact bent out of shape, somewhat, and shoehorned into the pot. He hewed it back into a circle, put the whole thing back together, and made my banjo sound finer and purer than ever. No soul in the bargain either. But I still wasn't satisfied and felt that it wasn't measuring up to his fine bluegrass instruments. They had a warm sound, neither too much plunk or too much twang, and yet their tone could travel for miles.

I had taken it into my head to be seduced by volume. My own rich devil I guess.

So when the summer was over I went to Victoria for a few days en route to Vancouver, and I found an Epiphone long neck down at Old Town Strings. It was ugly, but it had a hefty tone ring and it was loud. It also had the long neck, which was something that I had always appreciated. I prefer the A to the C, the E to the G, if you know what I mean. I like that deeper lower sound. That was legit, but it wasn't a good enough reason to trade my Neufeld. Still that's what I planned to do. I asked the guy behind the counter if they ever did straight trades and he said on occasion but he wouldn't count on it. And then I put my case up on the counter, opened it up and showed him my Neufeld and he said S-sure th-thing.

So I traded it. That's what I did. Over the course of an afternoon. Went to Vancouver. Eventually went home to Toronto. Entered my tiny apartment. Sat down to play and realized what I had done.

The Epiphone was loud and it was ugly. I had tried to convince myself that the outer beauty of the banjo did not matter. It was what was inside that counted. And yes that's true. But of course, what's inside a banjo is entirely dependent on the materials and craft with which it is made. That translates to beauty. Outside and inside are the same thing. There was nothing really wrong with my new Epiphone. Except it wasn't my old Neufeld. It was crude and loud and ugly, and it very nearly made me stop playing the banjo. I rang up Old Town Strings on the Left Coast and they told me the Neufeld had sold almost immediately. It was gone.

Stay tuned for Part Two of the Banjo Story. Hopefully Part Two won't have to be written on a borrowed computer.

The Real Wooden O

Footnote/postscript to the Company post, below: 'The Wooden O' isn't really anyone's term for the banjo except my own. I stole it from a term of affection for Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, from the 16th Century. Just to give credit where credit is due. I imagine the Wooden O in the picture is the one in the centre rather than the one on the left, since the one in the centre has more people hanging around the entrance (perhaps for a smoke?) Whereas the building on the left overlooks 3 people trying to kill each other (or perhaps two people and, um, a shadow?) while a couple of bystanders stand by the doors, probably debating the slow but inevitable decline of the theatre.

And One More

Possibly the earliest painting of a banjo player (3 strings plus a drone), from the 1700s in South Carolina. Painted by Anonymous, who also occasionally posts comments on this blog. It resides in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, Virgina. I suppose I could be calling this site the Banjo Banjart site. And why not? There aren't enough of those either.

Plug

The 'Z' on the barn door there? To your right? Beside the Complete Profile link? That stands for Zoilus. He gave me my first plug today.

Or this

My absolute favourite. "The Banjo Player" by William Sydney Mount, 1830. The colours are washed out a little, but this was the best one I could find. I love the way he's dressed, I love his hat, his green hankerchief, the striped pattern to the lapels of his vest. Hat and vest are both striped and so it seems are his suspenders, peeking out from beneath the vest. But these are the subtlest stripes I've ever seen in a 19th Century image of a black entertainer. In Michel Pastoureau's popular history of the stripe, The Devil's Cloth, he pegs the 19th Century as the time when stripy fabric began to transform from a hallmark of slavery and confinement to one of freedom and youth. See, the expression on this player's face is the most beautiful part of this painting: He's playing for his own pleasure; no one else's.
And he could squirt water out from between his two front teeth better than anyone I know. If he so chose.
And his eyes are so skillfully painted that you can see into them even though they're dark brown. If you so chose.

One mystery: the ornament hanging low (near his waist, below the hanky) from a string around his neck. It's either a brass mouthpiece for a horn or else it's a boatswain's whistle. Can anybody tell me? Is he a sailor who plays the banjo?
And of course, there's the banjo itself. He plays it so delicately. Is he frailing? The placement of the thumb suggests to me that yes, perhaps he is.
Still, I need to know about that brass ornament.
Or does the ring on his left pinky mean that he's an engineer?

See I knew this was a good/bad idea.

Or this

slightly creepy objet d'art in the grass.

Like this for instance

A sculpture by David Simon called The Banjo Player.

He writes that it's inspired by the opera "The Black Rider" by William Burroughs and Tom Waits.

Banjo Portrait

I tried to post this photo on the side, with my profile, but the url was too long and there were too many bytes. Seems to fit here though. It's the only one I could find online. It was taken by Victoria Wallace at a closing night party at the Blyth Festival. From now on though I won't post pictures of myself. I'll try to find subjects of greater interest and composition. Promise.
Oh, and that's Brendan Wall's father John in the background, plucking on his tenor banjo.


I seem to have misplaced that watch.

Company

Why do so many writers play the banjo? Among my own acquaintances there is Ann-Marie who purchased a banjo after she finished her novel and became my banjo student, displayed an admirable learning curve for awhile and then stopped practising. And there is André who, when the American rights to his novel were sold and after he had taken his daughter out for a shopping spree at the Gap, celebrated his good fortune by going out and getting himself a - yes - He was going to buy a pen, but a good friend so successfully mocked the choice for its practicality, its economy, its unacceptable humility, that he was forced to reconsider: "What do you really want to get for yourself?" she asked. "What is the one single thing in all the world that you would like to have for yourself right now, without considering the cost?"

I started playing the banjo in 1992. One July day I was wandering up Brunswick Avenue, heading nowhere in particular. At the corner of Bloor Street there was a band playing - a jug band - the sort of ensemble that includes a washboard and a stand-up bass fashioned from a bucket, a mop handle and a long piece of string. Right in the middle of a scrum of eight or ten enthusiasts stood this guy with a banjo. He was rock solid and motionless - a stance I've come to associate with bluegrass banjo players - eyes downcast, the expression on his face somewhere between boredom and intense concentration. Here was a fancy virtuoso with precision-tool nimble fingers, and his name was Christopher Quinn. (He now plays with the excellent bluegrass ensemble, Foggy Hogtown Boys - not to mention the Crazy Strings Wednesday night jams at the Silver Dollar, no cover.) I could go on and on now about the miracle of this bluegrass picker's art, but in truth it wasn't the stance of the player or even his technique that captivated me. It was the instrument itself: a wooden O with a white skin stretched over it, a stringed and fretted neck sticking out one side, and a middle-pitched almost nasal vocal sound coming straight out the front. I was imprinted, right on the spot. That wooden O was beating a path to my door, it was the open mouth of a chick in a nest. I had to ask myself: Whence this power?

The banjo came from Africa, across the Atlantic to America on the slave ships. American musicologists call it their only indigenous instrument. This of course is only true if you accept the Ellis Island vision of America, and since the slave ships never stopped at Ellis Island, one might find the idea of indigenous hard to swallow. Still, there is some truth to the claim: The sound that is associated with the banjo was created across the world. A Celtic tradition of lyrical ballads came across from the North. An African tradition of rhythm and drone came across from the South. Of course there's rhythm and drone in the north and lyricism in the south, but the truth of the matter is, these traditions did collide in the American South. They pounded against each other and caused centuries of pain, and they were captured in this Wooden O and became fused, creating a whole new sound and a symbol of the possibility inherent in such cultural collisions. The banjo a mongrel of a thing. Eventually tossed away by African American Culture in favour of fresher innovations, it was picked up by the cowboy hats, the Monroe Doctrine Boys, the bluegrass chewers and pickers, and carried on though the Twentieth Century.

So there I was, July at the corner of Bloor and Brunswick, fairly bursting with the desire to have an O of my own. It was a Saturday, late afternoon, and I knew that most music stores were going to close in an hour and were going to stay closed all the next day. What's more I knew that, come Monday morning, this irrational fever that presently gripped me would pass and I would very easily be able to talk myself out of making such a foolhardy purchase. You're a grown man, I would say to myself. You haven't got time to take up a whole new pursuit. You've never played an instrument in your life. You haven't got the aptitude. You haven't the patience. Your fingers will hurt. You can't afford it. It's a pipe dream. Friends and family will take you for a fool. It'll be a pain to lug around. You'll probably leave it on the subway. This is just the sort of half-cocked idea that causes you to go out and waste your money. You'll probably break it or something. Snap a string and not know how to fix it. Somebody will steal it. It'll get burned up in a fire. Wrecked on an airplane trip. Better not to get too attached to anything. Better not commit to anything that will just disappoint you later.

But it wasn't Monday morning yet: It was still late Saturday afternoon, and now I was thinking: If it doesn't work you can always resell it. With this sudden passion you can learn how to play this thing. It will give you a public face, be the extroverted part of yourself, a compensation for your bland writerly habits. You'll have something to do at parties. You'll be able to entertain your ailing mother. You'll be able to accompany your girlfriend's guitar. You'll be one of those people who play an instrument. You'll have a friend in old age, a companion to sail you through any doubt or disease or loneliness or despair. It will be your flotation device. It will be the thing that you do for yourself. It will teach you how to sing and to speak. You will write songs. Friends will seek you out. You will cheer people up. You'll be loved.

Tick tick tick. Long and McQuaid was located on the southwest corner of Ossington and Bloor or thereabouts. I grabbed a cab. I didn't have a lot of money but, having never purchased a stringed instrument of any kind before, I presumed the cost would not be proscriptive. I figured about eighty dollars. I was wrong of course, but it didn't matter: I was still in the grip. It wasn't Monday morning. I was ready to change my life. In the store I discovered that I was going to have to pay over two hundred dollars for a mere factory-made banjo. An aluminum O instead of a wooden O. Low-end tuning pegs. An unsupple head. It wasn't nearly so appealing as the one I'd seen in the street. Still I was in the grip. Then the price jumped to three hundred to include the case. Plus another twenty for strings and instruction book. I would have to go to the bank machine across the street. Three hundred dollars, spelling the difference between a banjo and not.

There was no contest. The difference between Saturday Night and Monday morning said it all. As I walked out of the store in possession of my new aluminum O they flipped the sign on the door from 'Open' to 'Closed.' Come Monday morning, rather than accounting for a Saturday impulse nipped in the bud, I was attempting to learn the old-time and bluegrass standard "Old Joe Clark."

Old Joe Clark had a house
Sixteen storeys high,
Every room in that big house
Was filled with chicken pie

I was hooked. I bought so many books on the art of Clawhammer Banjo that I very nearly didn't make rent. I quickly discovered that I actually knew something about all this. I'd been raised with records of American Folk Music and Minstrelsy: Pete Seeger. The Weavers. Hedy West. East Virginia. The State of Arkansas. Cotton Mill Girls. There was a lot of banjo on there, not in the intricate and impressive ensemble blugras style, but rather the simple ancient solo style that I suddenly found myself aching to play: Frailing. A.k.a. Clawhammer. A.k.a. rapping: A downpicking cross between melody and rhythm that finds the right hand thwacking exuberantly across the strings. Well-nigh impossible to explain on paper. In Theatre School, studying to be an actor, I'd seen a classmate a year above me play this style on his banjo in a show. Paul Miller. The instrument had given him such authority in my eyes. He lived in Toronto. I called him up. He came over one day and played with me. Sat back and sighed with satisfaction as I attempted my rudimentary version of Worried Man Blues. "That's real music," he said, as if it were a rare phenominon to be in the presence of such. To hear such. And it was coming from me.

Yes I was hooked. Three months after puchasing the aluminum O I journeyed over to The Twelfth Fret out on the Danforth and traded that one in (plus nine hundred dollars) for the one I have now - a Canadian-made Neufeld banjo with an open back, ebony fretboard, mother of pearl inlay and curly maple neck. The true blue wooden O. Now I wasn't just hooked: I was in love.

Everything I've learned about Stan Neufeld, the maker of my banjo: Lived just outside of Toronto for awhile. Was a part of the folk revival in the early seventies. Started making banjos. Mine appears to have been made in 1980, if the serial number is any indication. Made mandolins too, but apparently they're not as good as his banjos. His brother-in-law is Toronto pianist John Hess who owns the first banjo he ever made. His wife (John's sister) did the fancy mother-of-pearl inlay work on the necks of all the banjos he made. He quit making instruments in the 80's because he couldn't really make a living at it and moved out to B.C. where he now works as a building contractor. As a further note, all this information was contradicted one day by a man who walked up to me while I was busking on Queen Street: He said he knew the maker of my banjo. Said my man had played and made banjos for awhile in Peterborough and then moved down to the Southern Sates to become an itinerant preacher. How do you like them apples? Which story should I believe? I'll tell you: since I strive to embrace a pan-cultural vision of this wooden O and don't wish to see it pigeonholed as a folk instrument from a particular region of the United States, I tend to repeat the former story more often than the latter. And I imagine John Hess wouldn't lie about his sister's inlay work, or the occupation of the man she married.
The only other Neufeld Banjo I've seen is a bluegrass style (with a resonator to increase volume) owned by Winnipeg's Daniel Koulack, one of the great banjo players on the continent. A feature of both his and mine is the greater-than-average weight of the instrument, due to the concentration of wood in the fashioning of the pot.

I would gaze at the banjo from my bed, night after night, hanging there from a nail on my closet door. I would practise for six hours a day. Old Joe Clark. Jesse James. Groundhog. Wildwood Flower. Shady Grove. Ducks on the Millpond. John Hardy. Turkey in the Straw. Cluck Old Hen. Angeline the Baker. I played for my mother, who was sick. I did it to alleviate the boredom inherent in these visits home, but in truth she was the one who was bored: I must have played the same five songs a hundred times. She endured it though, content with the company. When she died I went into her bedroom and kissed her cheek and then withdrew to the cool darkness of the laundry room to play one last song for her. I hid because I was self-conscious. The rest of my family didn't know what to make of this new obsession of mine. I imagine they still don't. I just remember this instant what I played there: RedWing.

Then back to my city life. Cindy. Waterbound. Sugar Hill. Betty Liken. Little Rabbit. Kitchen Girl. A full year of this and my girlfriend left me. Who wouldn't, given the towering presence of this other love in my life? Following a period of bitterness in which a friend recalls I nearly threw it on top of the fire we'd made on a Lake Huron beach, I returned to the instrument with a new devotion. Soldier's Joy. The Big Scioty. Briar Picker Brown. I lived with a girl for awhile in Winnipeg. Played Sleeping Lulu in the morning, quietly, and managed not to wake her up. I was learning how to finesse. Started learning Canadian Songs: Lord Franklin. Wade Hemsworth's Blackfly, learned accidentally in a minor key. Foolish You. The Witch of the Westmoreland. One day my friends stopped shunning me. Started making requests. I no longer cleared a room. I was playing in public, sort of. Joined a stringband in Winnipeg. Mandolin. Guitar. Dulcimer. Fiddle. Accordian. All the other players were classical composers and singers and music professors who wanted to get a little of Paul Miller's 'real music' in on the side. They'd heard me play at a party and invited me to join them. I had to leave the city before we got out of the rehearsal stage. People told me that my voice had improved. I was becoming the player I wanted to be.

The songs I learned were simple and evocative, they left so much out of their stories and still succeeded in filling the canvas. They were down to earth. Perhaps that is the attraction to this troubador's instrument, the balladeer's instrument, to a writer: There's something ancient about it, and connected to the art of storytelling. It's reminicent of Homer's lute. Two writers I know, Joan McLeod and Patrick Freisen - both playwrights - told me once that they felt a singing, songwriting troubador has it all over the playwright in the sense that he can sit up there with his luthiered, stringed attendant and spin a tale from start to done in under five minutes. And then he can go on to spin another, and another. The playwright needs actors, lights, a stage, a script, sometimes even that very instrumentalist who can do it all on his own, strumming away in the background. There's more economy in this troubador's alternative than in André's choice of a pen. All you have to do is know how to play. And sing. And write. And sit up in front of people to tell a story with great authority. That is something writers dream of doing, even as they spread their words across a sheet of paper.

Still I don't think that's quite the reason. Players of the mandolin, the piano, the dulcimer, the bandore, the autoharp, the zither, the sitar, the lute, etc., can also exploit an audience's desire for music and a tale swiftly told. So many instruments have grace and beauty. They can take your breath away. But to me a banjo has presence of a singular nature, even if it's poorly made. It feels to me like human company. I'm drawn to it when I'm lonely, when I need a respite from writing. Perhaps it's the beckoning power of that O, symbol of the wheel, the vortex, the mind. Don't lay any violins across my path if there's a banjo in the room. Focus for me comes sometimes at a price. They might get stepped on. And the banjo doesn't sing the way other instruments do. It's pitched somewhat in the register of the human speaking voice. This makes it difficult to play with any resonance when people are talking; it feels then like everybody's talking at once. It's best played softly in a silent room. The banjo doesn't sing: It speaks. And when you, a writer, are all by yourself in a room, at a desk, for several hours at a stretch, and you start to get sick of the sound of your own voice in your head, you can pick it up and listen what it has to say. Depending on the tuning you find, it has a sense of humour, it's moody, can tell an epic tale or a bit of bombast and blarney. It can laugh, cry, wail, howl, moan, blaze, yip, whine, balk, scold, tease, rev, grin; Where the banjo is concerned, you may be playing it, but it does all the talking.

First Published in Number 63 of the Brick Literary Journal. Written in the Okanagan Valley. Edited by Michael Redhill. Reproduced with permission.

Instead of Practising

I'm gearing up towards practising. Practising the banjo seems to establish itself in direct conflict to writing projects and ambitions. Writing about practising, on the other hand, seems to be okay. Thus this blog. Its raison d'etre.

I have a big project I'm trying to finish, and when I'm done, I'll start practising again.

Test

There aren't enough banjo blogs on the net.